by Mark McKinnon It wasn’t much of a surprise when the New York Times reported that one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year-X-Men Origins: Wolverine-had been leaked a month before the film’s release date and was available for download on illegal file-sharing sites. Stories like that are all too common, unfortunately, with the ease of illegal file trafficking over P2P sites like Pirate Bay. The Wolverine leak is particularly troubling because the leaked version was unfinished, missing several key scenes, music, and special effects. As the film’s star Hugh Jackman said, “It’s a serious crime and there’s no doubt it’s very disappointing. I was heartbroken by it. It’s like a Ferrari without a paint job.”
What was surprising however, is that this time, the leak was universally condemned by Wolverine’s online fan community, bloggers, movie buffs and comic book fans. Several movie blogs are refusing to run reviews of the raw footage (FoxNews.com’s Roger Friedman was fired for writing a review of the pirated copy), while others such as Dark Horizon have condemned the uploading of the pirated copy as an “act that cruelly robs thousands of people of not just months of hard effort, but their livelihood as well.” The New York Times was even spurred to ask whether Internet access is a fundamental human right, or a privilege, carrying with it a responsibility for good behavior.
Could the leak of Wolverine be the seminal moment when online piracy jumped the shark? That’s doubtful, but the tide of public opinion does seem to be starting to turn.
Sweden has a particularly bad reputation when it comes to digital piracy. It is the home of Pirate Bay-the self-proclaimed world’s largest bittorrent tracking site-but its bad reputation is well-deserved for other reasons too: the country’s main statistics agency recently estimated that 8% of the Swedish population uses P2P networks, and even major party political candidates there have supported decriminalizing “non-commercial” file-sharing. (Just how transfers of complete creative works can be considered “non-commercial” is befuddling: there is certainly a commercial impact on the creators, artists, and musicians who are not being compensated. It’s a bit like saying that people who knowingly swap or receive stolen goods aren’t actually doing anything wrong, which is a bit of a head-scratcher.)
Even more stunning evidence of Sweden’s illegal file-sharing problem came last week when a new law aimed at curbing piracy took effect. The law, based on the EU’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED), requires ISPs to divulge information about illegal file-sharing activity, allowing copyright holders to take legal action against infringers. The day after the law took effect, Internet traffic in Sweden plummeted by over thirty percent in the first 24 hours, and there’s little doubt as to why.
But were the file-sharers suddenly scared straight? It seems unlikely that that’s the case given the overwhelming sense of entitlement many Swedes seem to feel towards their “free” digital content. As the BBC reported, Kjell Bohlund of the Swedish Publishers’ Association said an incredible 80 percent of Swedes don’t think copyright holders should take action against P2P users. Christian Engstrom of the Swedish Pirate Party-a political party working for copyright “reform” in Sweden (i.e. decriminalizing file-sharing)-agrees that the majority of file-sharers haven’t simply given up or seen the error of their ways. Engstrom told the BBC, “Experience from other countries suggests that while file-sharing drops on the day a law is passed, it starts climbing again. One of the reasons is that it takes people a few weeks to figure out how to change their security settings so that they can share files anonymously.”
Turns out, he was right. In response to the new law, Pirate Bay launched a new service just a week after IPRED took effect called (mockingly) Ipredator, which anonymizes users’ IP addresses so they can continue to share files without fear of legal action. The service will also make it next to impossible to find identity thieves and other cyber-criminals who can now use the service to anonymously carry out even more online mayhem, but as long as illegal file traffickers can continue to get their “free stuff” this is apparently an acceptable price to pay. Before the service even went live, over 100,000 people had signed up, roughly 80 percent of them Swedes, a Pirate Bay spokesman told a Swedish news agency.
Speaking about the sense of entitlement Swedes seem to feel, Bohlund of the Swedish Publishers Association remarked, “Ultimately we have to change people’s perception on file-sharing” so that they understand they’re “taking money out of the pockets of musicians, authors or artists.” In the U.S. this education process is now underway. Several ISP’s here are now sending notices to copyright infringers along with standard cease and desist letters from copyright owners. CNET reported that these cover letters “inform the customer that downloading unauthorized copies is illegal,” but noted that ISP’s have no intention of cutting off subscribers for repeat offenses, as would happen under a “three-strikes” rule. According to ISP’s, even without a three-strikes threat, the letters seem to be working; there have been few repeat offenders. While it’s still early, the evidence so far seems to suggest that U.S. Internet users don’t want to contribute to the growing trend of online lawlessness and are responsive to educational efforts discouraging it. With the explosion of free and inexpensive content online-subscription based service like Netflix, ad supported like Hulu, or pay-per-download like iTunes-getting users to switch from illegal P2P downloads to legal options isn’t a tough sell. As Billboard.biz reported earlier this month, P2P use among American teens is on the decline as they move to streaming sites that increasingly provide safe, legal, licensed content.
That’s good news, but in other parts of the world, there’s a lot more work to be done. But with collaboration between technology companies and copyright owners-plus flexible policies that allow those companies to find innovative new ways to deliver content legally-public opinion is shifting. As Internet consumers increasingly have other legal options to enjoy content online, sites like Pirate Bay that relish thumbing their noses at the law are starting to look like the irresponsible Internet citizens that they are.
Big Hollywood » Blog Archive » The Scourge of Scandinavia: The Dread Pirate Bay
